SEX AND COMMON-SENSE
BY
A. MAUDE ROYDEN
ASSISTANT PREACHER AT THE CITY TEMPLE, LONDON
1918-1920
To MY FRIENDS A.J.S. AND W.H.S.
PREFACE TO AMERICAN EDITION
THE NOBILITY OF THE SEX PROBLEM
Of all the problems which the alert and curious mind of modern man is
considering, none occupies him more than that of the relations of the
sexes. This is natural. It touches us all and we have made rather a mess
of it! We want to know why, and we want to do better. We resent being the
sport of circumstance and perhaps we are beginning to understand that this
instinct of sex which has been so great a cause of suffering and shame and
has been treated as a subject fit only for furtive whispers or silly jokes,
is in fact one of the greatest powers in human nature, and that its misuse
is indeed "the expense of spirit in a waste of shame."
It is not the abnormal or the bizarre that interests most of us to-day. It
is not into the by-ways of vice that we seek to penetrate. It is the normal
exercise of a normal instinct by normal people that interests us: and it is
of this that I have tried to write and speak. The curiosities of depravity
are for the physician and the psychologist to discuss and cure. Ordinary
men and women want first to know how to live ordinary human lives on
a higher level and after a nobler pattern than before. They want, I
think,--and I want,--to grow up, but to grow rightly, beautifully,
humanely.
And I believe the first essential is to realize that the sex-problem, as it
is called, is the problem of something noble, not something base. It is
not a "disagreeable duty" to know our own natures and understand our own
instincts: it is a joy. The sex-instinct is not "the Fall of Man"; neither
is it an instance of divine wisdom on which moralists could, if they had
only been consulted in time, greatly have improved. It is a thing noble in
essence. It is the development of the higher, not the lower, creation. It
is the asexual which is the lower, and the sexually differentiated which is
the higher organism.
In the humbler ranks of being there is no sex, and in a sense no death. The
organism is immortal because--strange paradox--it is not yet alive enough
to die. But as we pass from the lower to the higher, we pass from the less
individual to the more individual; from asexual to sexual. And with this
change comes that great rhythm by which life and death succeed each other,
and death is the _cost_ of life, and to bring life into the world means
sacrifice; and--as we rise higher still--to sustain life means prolonged
and altruistic love. This is the history of sex and of procreation, a
history associated with the rising of humanity in the scale of being, a
history not so much of his physical as of his spiritual growth.
By what an irony have we come to associate the instinct of sex with all
that is bestial and shameful!
It has happened because the corruption of the best is the worst. I always
want to remind people of this truism when they have _first_ come into
contact with sex in some horrible and shameful way. That is one of the
greatest misfortunes that can happen to any of us, and unfortunately it
happens to many. Boys and girls are allowed to grow up in ignorance. The
girls perhaps know nothing till they have to know all. The boys learn
from grimy sources. I was speaking on this subject at one of our great
universities the other day, and afterwards many of the men came and talked
to me privately. With hardly a single exception they said to me--"Our
parents told us nothing. We have never heard sex spoken of except in a
dirty way."
It is difficult for us, in such a case, to realize that sex is not a
dirty thing. It _can_ only be realized, I think, by remembering that
the corruption of the best is the worst, and that we can measure by the
hideousness of debased and depraved sexuality, the greatness and the wonder
of sex love.
This is to me the great teaching of Christ about sex. Other great
religious teachers--some of them very great indeed--have thought and taught
contemptuously of our animal nature. "He spake of the temple of His
body." That is sublime! That is the whole secret. And that is why vice is
horrible: because it is the desecration, not of a hovel or a shop, of a
marketplace or a place of business: but of a temple.
Christ, I am told, told us nothing about sex. He did not need to tell us
anything but "Your body is the Temple of the Holy Spirit."
It is my belief that in appealing to an American public I shall be
appealing to those who are ready to face the subject of the relations
of the sexes with perfect frankness and with courage. America is still a
country of experiments--a country adventurous enough to make experiments,
and to risk making mistakes. That is the only spirit in which it is
possible to make anything at all; and though the mistakes we may make in a
matter which so deeply and tragically affects human life must be serious,
and we must with corresponding seriousness weigh every word we say, and
take the trouble to think harder and more honestly than we have perhaps
ever thought before; yet I believe that we must above all have courage.
Human nature is sound and men and women do, on the whole, want to do what
is right. The great impulse of sex is part of our very being, and it is not
base. Passion is essentially noble and those who are incapable of it are
the weaker, not the stronger. If then we have light to direct our course,
we shall learn to direct it wisely, for indeed this is our desire.
Such is my creed. My prayer is for "more light." And my desire to take my
part in spreading it.
A. MAUDE ROYDEN.
April, 1922.
PREFACE TO THIRD ENGLISH EDITION
In the first editions of this book a certain passage on our Lord's humanity
(see p. 40) has, I find, been misunderstood by some. They have supposed
it to imply a suggestion that our Lord was not only "tempted in all things
like as we are"--which I firmly believe--but that He fell--which is to
me unthinkable. I hope I have made this perfectly clear in the present
edition.
Beyond this there are few alterations except the correction of some very
abominable errors of style. The book still bears the impress of the speaker
rather than the writer, and as such I must leave it.
With regard to the chapter called "Common-Sense and Divorce Law Reform,"
which now has been added to this edition, I wish to express my indebtedness
to Dr. Jane Walker and the group of "inquirers" over which she presided,
for the memorandum on Divorce which they drew up and published in the
_Challenge_, of July, 1918. I am not in complete agreement with their views
on all points, but readers of their memorandum will easily see whence I
derived my view as a whole.
A.M.R.
_January_, 1922.
FOREWORD
Chapters I. to VII. of this book were originally given in the form of
addresses, in the Kensington Town Hall, on successive Sunday evenings in
1921. They were taken down _verbatim_, but have been revised and even to
some extent rewritten. I do not like reports in print of things spoken, for
speaking and writing are two different arts, and what is right when it is
spoken is almost inevitably wrong when it is written. (I refer, of course,
to style, not matter.) If I had had time, I should have re-shaped what I
have said, though it would have been the manner only and not the substance
that would have been changed. This has been impossible, and I can therefore
only explain that the defective form and the occasional repetition which
the reader cannot fail to mark were forced upon me by the fact that I was
speaking--not writing--and that I felt bound to make each address, as far
as possible, complete and comprehensible in itself.
Chapters VIII., IX., and X. were added later to meet various difficulties,
questions, or criticisms evoked by the addresses which form the earlier
part of the book.
I desire to record my gratitude to Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Sladen, but for
whose active help and encouragement I should hardly have proceeded with the
book: to Miss Irene Taylor, who, out of personal friendship for me, took
down, Sunday after Sunday, all that I said, with an accuracy which, with a
considerable experience of reporters, I have only once known equalled
and never surpassed: and to my congregation, whose questions and speeches
during the discussion that followed each address greatly helped my work.
A. MAUDE ROYDEN.
_September_, 1921.
CONTENTS
I.--THE OLD PROBLEM INTENSIFIED BY THE DISPROPORTION OF THE SEXES
II.--A SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF THE UNMARRIED
III.--CONSIDERATION OF OTHER SOLUTIONS OF THE PROBLEM OF THE DISPROPORTION
OF THE SEXES
IV.--THE TRUE BASIS OF MORALITY
V.--THE MORAL STANDARD OF THE FUTURE: WHAT SHOULD IT BE?
VI.--A PLEA FOR LIGHT
VII.--FRIENDSHIP
VIII.--MISUNDERSTANDINGS
IX.--FURTHER MISUNDERSTANDINGS: THE NEED FOR SEX CHIVALRY
X.--"THE SIN OF THE BRIDEGROOM"
XI.--COMMON-SENSE AND DIVORCE LAW REFORM
I
THE OLD PROBLEM INTENSIFIED BY THE DISPROPORTION OF THE SEXES
"There has arisen in society, a figure which is certainly the
most mournful, and in some respects the most awful, upon which
the eye of the moralist can dwell. That unhappy being whose
very name is a shame to speak; who counterfeits with a cold
heart the transports of affection, and submits herself as the
passive instrument of lust; who is scorned and insulted as the
vilest of her sex, and doomed for the most part to disease and
abject wretchedness and an early death, appears in every eye as
the perpetual symbol of the degradation and sinfulness of man.
Herself the supreme type of vice, she is ultimately the most
efficient guardian of virtue. But for her the unchallenged
purity of countless happy homes would be polluted, and not a
few who, in the pride of their untempted chastity, think of her
with an indignant shudder, would have known the agony of
remorse and despair. She remains while creeds and civilisations
rise and fall, the eternal priestess of humanity, blasted for
the sins of the people."
Lecky's _History of European Morals_, Chap. V.
One of the many problems which have been intensified by the war is the
problem of the relations of the sexes. Difficult as it has always been,
the difficulty inevitably becomes greater when there is a grave
disproportion--an excess in numbers of one sex over the other. And in this
country, whereas there was a disproportion of something like a million more
women than men before the war broke out, there is now a disproportion of
about one and three-quarter millions.
This accidental and (I believe) temporary difficulty--a difficulty not
"natural" and necessary to human life, but artificial and peculiar to
certain conditions which may be altered--does not, of course, create the
problem we have to deal with: but it forces that problem on our attention
by sheer force of suffering inflicted on so large a scale. It compels us
to ask ourselves on what we base, and at what we value the moral standard
which, if it is to be preserved, must mean a tremendous sacrifice on the
part of so large a number of women as is involved in their acceptance of
life-long celibacy.
There is no subject on which it is more difficult to find a common
ground than this. To some people it seems to be immoral even to ask the
question--on what are your moral standards based? To others what we call
our "moral standards" are so obviously absurd and "unnatural" that the
question has for them no meaning. And between these extremes there are so
many varieties of opinion that one can take nothing as generally accepted
by men and women.
I want, therefore, to leave aside the ordinary conventions--not because
they are necessarily bad, but because they are not to my purpose, which
is to discover whether there is a real morality which we can justify
to ourselves without appeal to any authority however great, or to any
tradition however highly esteemed: a morality which is based on the real
needs, the real aspirations of humanity itself.
And I begin by calling your attention to the morality of Jesus of Nazareth,
not because He is divine, but because He was a great master of the human
heart, and more than others "knew what was in man."
You will notice at once the height of His morality--the depth of His mercy.
He demands such purity of spirit, such loyalty of heart, that the most
loyal of His disciples shrank appalled: "Whosoever shall look upon a woman
to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart."
... "Whosoever shall put away his wife and marry another, committeth
adultery against her." From such a standard Christ's disciples shrank--"If
the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry." And
one evangelist almost certainly inserted in this absolute prohibition the
exception--"Saving for the cause of fornication"--feeling that the Master
_could_ not have meant anything else. But, in fact, there is little doubt
that Jesus did both say and mean that marriage demanded lifelong fidelity
on either side; just as He really taught that a lustful thought was
adultery in the sight of God.
But if Christendom has been staggered at the austerity of Christ's morality
not less has it been shocked at the quality of His mercy. His gentleness to
the sensual sinner has been compared, with amazement, to the sternness of
His attitude to the sins of the spirit. Not the profligate or the harlot
but the Pharisee and the scribe were those who provoked His sternest
rebukes. And perhaps the most characteristic of all His dealings with such
matters was that incident of the woman taken in adultery, when He at once
reaffirmed the need of absolute chastity for men--demand undreamed of by
the woman's accusers--and put aside the right to condemn which in all that
assembly He alone could claim--"Neither do I condemn thee; go, and sin no
more."
Having then in mind this most lofty and compassionate of moralists, let us
turn to the problem of to-day. Here are nearly 2,000,000 women who, if the
austere demands of faithful monogamy are to be obeyed, will never know
the satisfaction of a certain physical need. Now it is the desire of every
normal human being to satisfy all his instincts. And this is as true of
women as of men. What I have to say applies indeed to many men to-day, for
many men are unable to marry because they have been so broken by war--or
otherwise--so shattered or maimed or impoverished that they do not feel
justified in marrying. But I want to emphasize with all my power that the
hardness of enforced celibacy presses as cruelly on women as on men. Women,
difficult as some people find it to believe, are human beings; and because
women are so, they want work, and interest, and love--both given and
received--and children, and, in short, the satisfaction of every _human_
need. The idea that existence is enough for them--that they need not work,
and do not suffer if their sex instincts are repressed or starved--is a
convenient but most cruel illusion. People often tell me, and nearly always
unconsciously _assume_, that women have no sex hunger--no sex needs at all
until they marry, and that even then their need is not at all so imperious
as men's, or so hard to repress. Such people are nearly always either men,
or women who have married young and happily and borne many children, and
had a very full and interesting outside life as well! Such women will
assure me with the utmost complacency that the sex-instincts of a woman are
very easily controllable, and that it is preposterous to speak as if their
repression really cost very much. I think with bitterness of that age-long
repression, of its unmeasured cost; of the gibe contained in the phrase
"old maid," with all its implication of a narrowed life, a prudish mind,
an acrid tongue, an embittered disposition. I think of the imbecilities in
which the repressed instinct has sought its pitiful baffled release, of
the adulation lavished on a parrot, a cat, a lap-dog; or of the emotional
"religion," the parson-worship, on which every fool is clever enough
to sharpen his wit. And all these cramped and stultified lives have not
availed to make the world understand that women have had to pay for their
celibacy!
"The toad beneath the harrow knows
Exactly where each tooth-point goes.
The butterfly beside the road
Preaches contentment to that toad."
Modern psychology is lifting the veil to-day from the suffering which
repression causes. It is a pity that its most brilliant exponents should
ascribe to a single instinct--however potent--_all_ the ills that afflict
mankind, for such one-sidedness defeats its own object; but, at least, the
modern psychologist is trying to show us "exactly where each tooth-point
goes" in the repression of the sex-instinct among women as among men. Nor
does the fact that the _tabu_ of society has actually in many cases enabled
a woman to inhibit the development of her own nature, obviate the fact that
she does so at great cost, even when she least understands what she does.
I affirm this, and with insistence, that the normal--the average--woman
sacrifices a great deal if she accepts life-long celibacy. She sacrifices
quite as much as a man. In those cases--too frequent even now--where she
is not educated or expected to earn her own living or to have a career, I
maintain that she loses more than a man who is expected to work. I do not
say, and I do not believe, that passion in a woman is the same as in a man,
or that they suffer in precisely the same way. I believe indeed that if men
and women understood each other a little better they would hurt each other
a good deal less. But I am persuaded that we shall not even begin to reach
a wise morality so long as we persist in basing our demands on the imbecile
assumption that women suffer nothing or little by the unsatisfaction of the
sex side of their nature.
I emphasize this point here, because it is involved in the present state
of affairs. I have reminded you that there are nearly 2,000,000 women
whose lives are to be considered. If the number were quite small, it might
comfortably be assumed that the women who remained unmarried were those
who, in any case, had no vocation for marriage. For it is, of course, true
that there are such women, as there are such men. The normal man and woman
desire marriage and parenthood, and are fitted for it; but there are always
exceptions who either do not desire it, or, desiring it, feel bound to
put it aside at the call of some other vocation, which they feel to
be supremely theirs, and which is not compatible with marriage. They
sacrifice; but they do so joyfully, not for repression, but for a different
life, another vocation. And where the number of the unmarried is small,
it may without essential injustice be supposed that these are the natural
celibates.
But you cannot suppose that of 2,000,000! Among the number how many are
young widows, girls engaged to marry men now dead, and how many whose
_natural_ vocation was marriage, motherhood, home-making, and all that is
meant by such things as these? If this be the normal vocation of the normal
woman how many of these have been deprived of all that seemed to them to
make life worth living? Is it astonishing if they rebel? If they determine
to snatch at anything that yet lies in their grasp? If they affirm "the
right to motherhood" when they want children, or the satisfaction of the
sex-instinct when that need becomes imperious?
If we are to say to such women--"The normal life is denied to you, not
by your fault, or because you do not need it, but because we have
unfortunately been obliged to sacrifice in war the men who should have been
your mates: and we now invite you in the interests of morality to accept as
your lot perpetual virginity"--it is not difficult to imagine their reply:
"What is this morality in whose interests you ask so huge a sacrifice? Is
it worth such a price? Is the whole community willing to pay it, or is it
exacted from us alone? And on what, in the end, is it based?"
The answer to this question is often given to the young, even before the
question arises; and it is given in the lives of men and women. The lives
of those who are nobly celibate, or nobly married, are in themselves so
moving a plea, that few who have been closely in contact with them are left
untouched. It is the ideal realized that is the best defence of the ideal.
But let us admit that, too often, the actual marriage is a very pitiful
comment on our morality, and celibacy either a mere pretence or a very
mean and pinched reality. What answer then shall we give to the rising
generation which questions us--"On what do you base your moral standards?"
I do not doubt that I am voicing the experience of many if I say that when
I first began to ask such questions I met first of all with extreme horror
at such a question being put at all; and that, when I persisted, I found
that it was almost entirely by women that the cost was to be borne. Women
were to conform strictly to the moral standard (whose basis I was not
questioning), but men need not and, generally speaking, did not. I reasoned
that if men need not be chaste there must exist at least a certain number
of women who _could_ not be so, and that this reduced "morality" to a
farce. I soon found that it was not a farce but a tragedy. These women were
admittedly necessary but outcast. They were the safeguards of the rest. I
wish that men would try for a moment to put themselves in the place of a
young girl who learns for the first time that prostitution is the safeguard
of the virtuous! I think that they would never again wonder at the
rejection of such "moral standards" by the rising generation of women. You
would only wonder why women had tolerated such a combination of folly
and cruelty so long. You would not ask them to accept or to suffer for a
"standard" like that.
Again, this morality for which (it is affirmed) society is prepared to pay
so horrible a price--what is it? A physical condition! A state of body,
which any man can destroy! an "honour" which lies at the mercy of a
ruffian! A woman raped is a woman "dishonoured." Are her "morals" then at
the mercy of another person? Is "morality" not a state of mind or of will,
a spiritual passion for purity, but a material, physical thing which is
only hers as long as no one snatches it from her? How senseless! How false!
When you ask a woman to-day to make the great sacrifice "in the interests
of morality," you must offer her a morality that _is_ moral--a morality
whose justice and humanity move her to a response; not a morality which
offends every instinct of justice and reality the moment the person to whom
it is offered understands what it means. For what is asked to-day is too
often that women should sacrifice themselves for the convenience of other
people--of a hypocritical society which preaches a morality as senseless as
it is base.
When older people tell me that the young seem to have "no morals at all,"
I ask myself whether the repudiation of much that has been called morality
was not, after all, a necessity, if we are to advance at all. When I
reflect on, for example, Lecky's "History of European Morals," and
remember that it was not a profligate or a hedonist, but an honourable and
respectable member of a civilized society, who proclaimed the prostitute
the high priestess of humanity--the protectress of the purity of a thousand
homes[A]--I am prepared to say that to have "no morals at all" is better
than to accept such infamy and _call_ it "morals"; as it is better to be an
agnostic or an atheist than to worship a devil--to have no standard than to
say: "Evil be thou my good."
[Footnote A: Lecky's "History of European Morals." Chap. V.]
And I believe that the tendency to reject all moral standards is largely
due to the refusal of an older generation to examine and to justify its own
standard. To refuse to discuss or defend it--to affirm that it is beyond
debate and not to be questioned without depravity is merely to produce the
impression that it is beyond defence and impossible to justify. It is not
surprising that people begin to say: "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow
we die. Let us experience all we desire. Let us act like the normal healthy
creatures that we are. Let us ignore the flimsy barriers a corrupt and
imbecile moral code would erect between us and what we desire."
That is the point of view of many men and women to-day. That is what the
absence of a just and reasoned moral code has led to. And I am prepared,
in spite of all protests, to affirm that it is not a step backward, but
forward; that promiscuity is not as vile as prostitution--a prostitution
which has been accepted, which has been _defended_ by Christian people! It
is less horrible for a human being to have the morals of an animal than the
morals of a devil. We have to begin by rejecting the morality of fiends,
and we begin, even if the immediate effect is more terrifying to the
moralist than the old hidden-up devilry that lent itself to an easier
disguise.
So I believe. And so the present chaos, though it has its elements of
anxiety and its obvious dangers, leaves me unafraid. I am utterly persuaded
that we shall win through to solid ground.
I believe that the long groping of humanity after a sex-relationship which
shall be stable, equal, passionate, disciplined, pure, is the groping of a
right instinct, the hunger of a real need; and that we must--we shall--find
its answer. With many failures, with many reactions, it can, I think, be
seen, as history unrolls its record and civilizations rise and fall,
that the movement of humanity has been towards a more stable, a more
responsible, a more disciplined, but not less passionate form of
relationship between men and women. Let us not forget that great and
pregnant fact when we reject the immoral arguments, the cruelties and
injustices, with which society has sought either to justify its ideals or
to conceal its horrible failures. For if we can thus distinguish, and go
forward, this generation will not have suffered in vain. It will, on the
contrary, make of its suffering the spur which shall force us all onward
and upward. It will by its courage and its honesty give to the world a
truer and a nobler moral standard than the world has ever accepted yet.
II
A SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF THE UNMARRIED
Jesus said, "the foxes have holes, and the birds of the air
have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head."
(St. Luke ix. 58.)
In the last chapter I tried to deal with the actual problem created in
this country by the disproportion of the sexes--the fact that there are,
roughly, one and three-quarters to two million more women than men in this
country; and I was obliged to confine myself simply to stating the problem,
which, to my mind, is very greatly intensified by the fact, generally
ignored, that the sex needs of a woman are just as imperative, their
suppression just as hard to bear, as a man's; that woman is fully as human
as man, and that parenthood and loverhood and all that the satisfaction of
the sex instinct means to him, it means also to her. I do not affirm that
the difficulty of self-control or the suffering of abstinence presents
itself to men and women in just the same way; I am sure it does not. I do
not under-estimate the difference. But I do emphasize the fact that, as far
as I am able to judge, the suffering is _equal_, although it is different
in character. Therefore, the denial of marriage to a very large number
of women means that, although some women, like some men, are naturally
celibate, when so great a number of women are denied the possibility of
marriage, we must take it for granted that among them the average will not
be natural celibates, but women who suffer a very great loss if they do not
marry.
Now I want to add that this disproportion of the sexes is quite artificial,
and, therefore, should be temporary. From some of the letters I have
received I gather that people imagine that there has always been a very
much larger number of women than men, and not only in this country, but
throughout the world; and that, therefore, we ought to shape our customs
and our moral standards with this disproportion in mind as a permanent
fact. I want to point out that this is not the case. The causes of the
present excess of women over men in this country are quite artificial. As a
matter of fact, there are more boys born in this country than girls--about
107 to 100 is the ratio--but the boys die in very much larger numbers
during the first twelve months of their life, because they are more
difficult to rear in bad conditions. But bad conditions are not inevitable!
These babies die from preventable causes. It is not within the Providence
of God that these children _must_ die, nor is it a necessity of human
nature. It is due to preventable causes, and is, therefore, as I say,
artificial. Again, we have a very large empire, stretching out to the
remoter parts of the world, and to that empire men go out in very much
larger numbers than women, so that the disproportion here is, in part, the
reverse side of the disproportion in the great Overseas Dominions, where
there are more men than women. But that, too, is a purely artificial and
temporary state of things, which has nothing to do with the fundamental
conditions of human society. Finally, of course, there is the war, which
again creates an artificial state of affairs, by killing enormous numbers
of young men, just at the age--between twenty and forty or forty-five--when
they should be growing into manhood, and becoming husbands and fathers.
That again is artificial.
The reason why I emphasize this is because I feel very strongly that we
must not remodel our whole society, and recreate our moral standards, to
meet a passing and an artificial state of affairs. That is my answer to
those who seem to think the solution of all our difficulties is to be
found in the adoption of polygamy. Now polygamy is a perfectly respectable
institution in a large number of countries. It is quite an old idea. It has
not occurred to people for the first time between last Sunday and to-day.
It has been discussed in the Sunday newspapers, which are the most widely
read of any papers issued by the press. My answer to it is that such an
expedient would be just an instance of this remodelling of your whole moral
standard to meet an entirely artificial state of affairs. Polygamy is not
possible and never has been possible on a great scale, because in hardly
any country, certainly not in the world as a whole, is there a great
disproportion of the sexes under ordinary circumstances. The idea most
people appear to have about it is that in some parts of the world, like
India and China, every man is blessed with three or four wives. It is a
perfectly fantastic picture. The balance of the sexes--on the whole--is
equal. It is, therefore, a physical impossibility for polygamy to be a
universal custom. It cannot be practised, and has never been practised,
except among the rich--a small class always. Now that surely makes
it obvious that it is not a real solution. It might meet a temporary
difficulty; but is it reasonable, is it statesmanlike, to alter our entire
moral standard merely to tide over a temporary difficulty; to meet a state
of affairs which is purely artificial? I think that morals go deeper,
and should be based on some fundamental need, rather than on a purely
artificial need created by a passing difficulty, however great that
difficulty may be at the time. I do not, therefore, wish to dwell on other
better but temporary solutions, such as emigration. I do think that this is
a solution which would ease the situation to some extent, and in a normal
and right way, because the disproportion in the Overseas Dominions, where
the balance is the other way, and there are more men than women, is every
whit as unwholesome and as disastrous as is the disproportion of women in
this country. Consequently, from the point of view of both men and women,
I think that emigration is a thing that ought to be considered and helped
forward very much more than it is; but there, again, this is only a
temporary solution. We are trying to arrive at some moral position which is
based on the permanent needs and the real nature of human beings.
It has become almost a habit with me to feel that the real solution of
every problem can be found, by those people who are hurt by it, if they
will take hold of life _where it hurts_, and find out, not how they
themselves can escape from that hurt, but how they can prevent that
hurt from becoming a permanent factor in the lives of their brothers and
sisters. Now, the point at which this problem hurts many of us lies in
this, that women have been taught, by a curious paradox, first of all that
they ought not to have any sexual feeling, any hunger, any appetite at all
on that side of their natures; and secondly, that they exist solely to meet
that particular physical need in men. The idea that woman was created, not
like man, for the glory of God, but for the convenience of man, has greatly
embittered and poisoned public opinion on this subject. Women are taught,
almost from the moment they come into the world, that their chief end in
existence is to be, in some way or other, a "helpmeet" for man. I remember,
in the early days of the Suffrage struggle, hearing people, and women quite
as often as men--more often I think--urging certain rights and principles
for women, on the ground that they were meant to be the helpmeets of man.
They used to quote the earlier chapters of the Book of Genesis to show that
women were created for that purpose; and it was considered a very lofty
kind of appeal. I think it never failed to evoke the applause of those whom
you will forgive my calling a little sentimental. I do not think it ever
failed to arouse in myself a deep sense of resentment. The writer of the
_first_ chapter of the Book of Genesis speaks of humanity as being created
in the image and likeness of God, "_male and female created He them_";
there is no suggestion here that one sex was simply to be the servant of
the other. That occurs in the second chapter. The idea is persistent; it
is, of course, much older than the Old Testament. And it persists right
into the New Testament, where you hear a man of the intellectual and
spiritual calibre of St. Paul affirm that man was made for God, but woman
was made for man. Down the ages this message has come, and women have
been taught to consider themselves, and men to consider them, as primarily
instruments of sex, of marriage and motherhood, or of other forms of
serving men's needs. You do not find that feeling in Christ's attitude
towards women. When people speak as though it were one of the weaknesses
of Christianity that it appeals, or seems to appeal, more to women than
to men, I ask you to believe that sometimes consciously, often quite
unconsciously, women respond with passionate gratitude to Christ, because
of His sublime teaching that every human soul was made for God, and that no
part or section of society, no race, no class, and no sex, was made for the
convenience of another.
I want then to combat with all my power this ancient but un-Christlike
belief that women miss their object in life if they are not wives and
mothers. It may seem something of a contradiction that I should in a
previous chapter so have emphasized the need of women for the satisfaction
of their sexual nature, and now be arguing that we must not assume
that they have no right to exist if they do _not_ meet this particular
satisfaction; but I think you will realize that it is not a paradox when I
ask you to consider for a moment what your attitude to men on this subject
is. Many people hold that a man's passions are a tremendous factor in his
existence, so strong that he must always be forgiven if he cannot control
them; so strong that, on the whole, it is hardly to be expected that he
should control them. But yet, if a man does not marry, or if there are more
men than women in a certain country--as, for instance, in Australia, or
Western Canada to-day--nobody speaks of those men as though they were
"superfluous," as though they had ceased to have any real object for
existence. People will realize that it is a hardship--a very great
hardship--in their lives; they will be apt to excuse them for taking what
they can get if they cannot get everything; but no human being talks of the
"superfluous men" in any of our great Dominions. People always realize that
a man has a _human_ value, and that, however great the urgency of the
sex side of him, he still is a human being, he still has his value in the
world, even supposing that he should live and die celibate. If you will try
to put your mind into that attitude towards women, you will, I think, see
that it is not a paradox to say that a woman may and does suffer if she
does not fulfil the whole of her nature, and yet that it is a monstrous
fallacy to affirm that, because of that, she ceases to have any reason for
existence; that she is a futile life, a person who does not really "count."
Sex is a great and a mighty power, but it is something more than the mere
satisfaction of a physical need. It is part of the great rhythm of life,
running through all the higher creation; it is the instinct to create,
going forth in the power of love, proving to us day by day that only love
can create, bringing us nearer to the Divine Power, Who is Love, and Who
created the heaven and the earth. In spite of our horrible thoughts about
sex, our hideous sins against it, I do not think that in anything God has
made man more "in His image and likeness" than when He gave him the power,
through love, to create life. That is a power that makes us akin to God
Himself, and the instinct of sex is not a grimy secret between two rather
shamed human beings, but a great impulse of life and love--yes, even, at
the height of it, an instinct to sacrifice in order that life may come
into the world; it is a great bond of union between human beings; it is the
secret of existence, the secret of the meaning of life; that which is to
the nature of man like the sense of music to the musician, of beauty to the
artist, of insight to the poet. A man may have no ear for music, and yet be
a good and noble man; but who will deny that he lacks something because he
has it not? A man may have no sense of beauty, but he is not, therefore, a
depraved, immoral person; yet does he not stand outside some of the great
secrets of life? So, when this still deeper instinct of creative love is
not yours, do not congratulate yourselves, or pride yourselves that you
have never felt it. For it means that you stand outside the great communion
of the life of the world; it means that for you some of the music of the
universe is dumb, and some of the beauty of the universe dark.
Yet how long have women been taught that this divine impulse of creation
is something base! Base even in a man, belonging to his lower nature; still
more deplorable in a woman, a thing to be ashamed of, a thing to crush down
and suppress, a thing you would not confess to your nearest friends, or
discuss with your physician. To speak of it even to your own mother would
be to be met with the averted look and word of disapproval. If, as a
consequence of this, women have inhibited their own nature, so that
many women have created in their minds a kind of tone-deafness, a
colour-blindness to this side of life, does that not seem to you a tragedy?
To have so great and wonderful a thing in your nature and to suppress it as
though it were something shameful and weak? Do you wonder if the term
"old maid" has become synonym for everything that is narrow, and hard, and
prudish and repressive? Do you wonder that the girls of this generation,
confronted with the choice between such an attitude towards life as that,
and its opposite--willingness to give oneself to anyone, to take all that
one can get, because life refuses so much that one had hoped for--do you
wonder that they often choose the second alternative? Does it seem to you
so astonishing that girls, who think more than they used to, who feel that
there is nothing to be ashamed of in the divine impulse of their creative
womanhood, should rather take what they can get than accept that cruel,
cramped attitude of sheer repression which has been all too often their
only choice in the past? Is it really fair to say to them that their
moral standards are going down, that they have no sense now of morality
or self-respect? I tell you that if one has to make a choice between the
suppression of one half--and that so beautiful a half--of human nature, and
its degradation, I would not sit in judgment on those who chose either way.
But there is another possibility. You can repress, and God knows how many
boys and young men, how many young women and girls have struggled to do so,
and are trying to do so to-day, with a sense always of guilt and shame
in their minds, laying up mental difficulties for themselves, the
psychologists tell us, by this repression. You know the type; you know the
kind of person who becomes hard and narrow and uncomprehending. That is
one type. You can read it in their faces. The pinched look, the cramped
mentality reflects itself in the body and in the face. And then there is
the other type, those who have rejected this attitude towards life, denying
that there is anything to be ashamed of in the natural impulse of their
sex, or cause for regret if they give rein to that whose repression does
so much harm, who frankly fling away the idea of self-control, because
repression has seemed such a disastrous method of self-control. You can see
it in their faces also; in the gradual demoralization of their nature.
The rake on one hand, the prude on the other, represent the ultimate
consequence of the process I am trying to describe. Many people have marked
on their souls, if not on their faces, one or other of these ways of life.
They have not, perhaps, gone far, they may have gone but a little way in
one direction or the other; but the mark on the soul remains all the same.
And when you see the extreme result, the prude on one side, the rake on
the other, do you not begin to desire a better way? To ask yourself whether
there is not a third choice before you?
I believe there is; and the choice is this: It is neither the repression
nor the degradation, but _transformation_ of the sex side of our nature.
I will take as the supreme example of that transformation the figure of
Christ Himself--Christ who had neither wife nor child--St. Francis of
Assisi, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Theresa of Spain. Four of the greatest
figures--One of them supreme--who were not "natural celibates" in the sense
that implies that they did not have surging through them the divine impulse
of creative love; for these are the greatest lovers the world has ever
seen, and compared with theirs even the great love of one man for one
woman, one woman for one man, is the lesser thing. But these great figures
in human history are those on whose hearts Humanity itself made such a
claim that it became impossible for them to give to one what was claimed by
all the world. You will see that this is not a denial of creative love, for
no one in the world has so loved the world as these. They are the beacons
of humanity in this matter of love, and how are they, shall we say, how
are they not fathers and mothers, whose spiritual children are all over the
world? Have they not born into the world with travail of soul, the souls of
men and women? These great Lovers of Humanity were not lacking in passion;
had they been they could not have moved the world; but their passion was
transmuted to the service of Humanity itself, for nothing else was great
or wide enough for such a love. Does anyone suppose that it was a mere
instinct of asceticism that drove St. Francis to make out of snow, cold
images of wife and child? Was it not rather the sudden resurgent desire of
the greatest of the saints for some more humanly warm affection, something
more individual, something that nestles more closely to the heart, than
this great service of Humanity? And in a savage irony he mocks his pain.
"There are thy children, there is thy wife," says St. Francis, and his cry
is not the answer of the spirit to a lustful temptation: it was the cry of
a lonely human heart for the human happiness of wife and children and home.
Aye, and I would claim that Our Lord Himself had this desire. For I cannot
doubt that in that glorious young manhood of His, so full of power and
sympathy and love, this agony of longing sometimes swept over Him. He whose
vitality and power were such that He hardly knew fatigue, who was so close
a friend, so much loved and sought by women, so tender to little children,
so young, so strong--is it not certain that He was indeed "tempted in all
things like as we are"? How could one so physically vital, so humanly and
divinely full of love, escape the conflict? That He conquered we know; that
He suffered we cannot doubt. All His perfect humanity speaks to us in that
lonely cry: "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but
the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head." Do not dream, those of you
who may have to struggle with your own nature, do not dream that Christ
has not been there with you, that He had nothing to feel or to suffer. How
would He have developed that spiritual power, how would He have become so
great a Lover of the world if He knew nothing of that side of life? But He,
and His greatest followers--St. Francis of Assisi, St. Catherine and St.
Theresa, and countless others who have followed them--learned to transmute
that great creative force, disdained both choices which I set before you,
finding a nobler and more glorious way. These would neither repress this
great impulse, nor dissipate it, but so used it for the service of man that
there is in all the history of man no life more rich, more human, more full
of love, more full of creation, or more full of power, than the lives of
these celibate men and women, who learned from Christ how they could live
and love.